How Montana’s candidates for federal office plan to tackle healthcare

As the only candidate in this race with 18 years of healthcare experience, I have the only plan in this country that will finally revolutionize healthcare for our future. My Healthcare 2.0 agenda will consolidate federal healthcare programs under a congressionally chartered nonprofit, the United States Healthcare Corporation. Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, Affordable Care Act subsidies, VA, Tricare, federal employee coverage, and other federal health benefits would retain appropriate eligibility and benefit protections while moving toward one administrative framework, one set of enrollment rules, interoperable records, and standardized claims processing using modern technology replacing outdated costly paper processes.

The plan would be funded initially by redirecting existing federal healthcare appropriations, not creating an entirely new spending stream. Additional funding would come from administrative savings, competitive prescription drug purchasing, and modern fraud detection systems. Since this will be a non-profit organization, major corporations can elect to donate to our nation’s healthcare plans. Any savings should first finance the transition and then reduce premiums, eliminate deductibles, and lower taxpayer costs. The plan also calls for creating competition in the private industry by offering a standard plan to those who cannot afford the private industry plan or do not qualify for full public assistance. This plan will lead the industry standards for overhauling corrupt insurance plans and driving the way for true affordability.

Success would be measured publicly through lower per-person spending growth, fewer uninsured people, reduced premiums and out-of-pocket costs, shorter appointment wait times, fewer preventable hospitalizations, improved health outcomes, lower improper-payment rates, and audited administrative savings. We will see a striving and healthy healthcare community allowing practitioners to once again open doors in rural communities and compete with big monopolies. Congress should require annual independent reporting and automatic corrective action when benchmarks are missing.

Health care is an absolute crisis. Everywhere I go, I hear from Montanans who are struggling to access or afford even the basic health care they need to keep their families healthy. Meanwhile, politicians in Washington are in the pocket of insurance and big pharmaceutical companies that profit off sick Americans, and they refuse to work together to fix the system. 

We don’t have to submit to gridlock and inaction caused by partisan theater and an insurance industry that spends more on lobbyists every year than most Montana towns will ever see. I will work with anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, who will do the actual work of making care more affordable and accessible. And I will stand up to both parties when they work against the interests of our state.

I believe every Montanan deserves access to an affordable coverage option, without losing individual choice or reducing competition. But while we work to overhaul our health care system into one that incentivizes keeping people healthy, not just pays for them after they get sick, we need to take immediate action.

As Montana’s Independent senator, my first focus will be on restoring the ACA tax credits that were allowed to expire and have caused premiums to go up nearly 30%. I will fight every day to protect Medicaid expansion and stop the Medicaid eligibility verification rules that will cause 30,000 Montanans to lose access to health care in the next 12 months. I’ll work to expand Medicare’s power to negotiate drug prices and to increase price transparency requirements for hospitals and drug-pricing middlemen to rein in costs system-wide.

Montana families shouldn’t have to choose between seeing a doctor and paying rent. Washington is making that choice harder, not easier, and I’m going to change that.

Our healthcare system is broken. Montanans are stuck paying more every year for coverage that gets worse, while 20,000+ Montanans have already lost coverage. Meanwhile, the CEOs of the top 10 health insurance companies made over $200 million last year alone. This constant state of crisis response leaves my opponent’s corporate donors getting richer while the rest of us pay more for less. 

Here’s how we fix it: first, we stop electing politicians like my opponent who take corporate money, because that dirty money is precisely what’s preventing common sense solutions. My opponent is backed by over $3 million from corporate PACs and SuperPACs who are supporting Aaron because they know he’ll serve their interests, not ours.

Second, let’s reverse the $1 trillion in Medicaid & ACA cuts that Aaron cheered on from his recording studio. Those cuts left insurance premiums skyrocketing, 10 million+ more Americans losing health coverage, and a new set of paperwork requirements that will require Montana to hire 59 new staff just to boot another 30-38,000 Montanans off their healthcare. 

Lastly, let’s bring real choice to our healthcare system by giving every American the choice to join Medicare, increasing reimbursement rates so our rural hospitals can stay in business, and making that coverage comprehensive. If insurance companies want to compete, let ’em, but their monopoly on coverage clearly isn’t working for most Americans.

We can pay for all of this without going deeper into debt by repealing the $3 trillion of BBB tax cuts that only went to corporations and the richest Americans, keeping provisions like no tax on overtime & Social Security that help working class Montanans, and passing laws to make sure nobody making over $1 million/year is paying a lower effective income tax than someone making $70,000.

As an Independent Congressman, I will focus on reforms that lower costs, expand access and improve quality of care, but are also measurable.

1. Lower prescription drug costs. Dramatically expand Medicare drug-price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, accelerate generic and biosimilar competition, and increase transparency and accountability for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Fund this through Medicare savings generated by lower drug prices and reduced improper payments. Measured Success: lower out-of-pocket prescription costs and Medicare drug spending.

2. Strengthen rural healthcare. Expand the National Health Service Corps, Medicare-funded residency training, loan repayment and other incentives for physicians, nurses, PAs, NPs, pharmacists, and behavioral-health professionals serving shortage areas. Closely monitor and strengthen the Rural Health Transformation Program and protect critical-access hospitals. Fund these efforts by redirecting existing federal healthcare workforce and rural-health dollars toward communities with documented shortages. Measured Success: more providers, shorter travel distances and wait times, fewer rural hospital closures, and improved clinical outcomes.

3. Reform prior authorization. Regulate the use of AI in prior authorizations and scrutinize Medicare Advantage programs. Promote rapid decisions, stronger appeals, and “gold-card” exemptions for clinicians with consistently high approval rates. Fund implementation through administrative savings. Measured Success: fewer unnecessary denials, faster treatment, and fewer clinician hours spent on paperwork.

4. Pay for outcomes, not volume. Expand Medicare value-based payment models and pursue appropriate site-neutral payments for clinically equivalent services. Savings from overutilization can be reinvested in quality and access. Measured Success: lower costs, fewer preventable hospitalizations and readmissions, and better patient outcomes.

5. Strengthen hospital price-transparency requirements and require usable estimates of expected out-of-pocket costs before scheduled care. Fund enforcement through existing regulatory resources and penalties for persistent noncompliance (which is common). Measured Success: greater price competition and smaller gaps between estimated and actual bills.

We need to reverse the trillion-dollar cuts to Medicaid that Troy Downing voted for, as well as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which caused health insurance to be out of reach for tens of millions of Americans. We fund those by clawing back the trillion-dollar tax cuts that Troy Downing voted to give to the top 1%, and then tax wealthy corporations at an equitable level. Wealthy corporations are paying almost no income tax anymore, while raking in record profits. So, that is where we’re going to go to fund the restoration of these subsidies.

I support the goal of universal healthcare for all Americans. I believe that it should be the goal of every civilized nation in the 21st century to provide healthcare for all of its citizens. We need to end our grotesque experiment with for-profit healthcare.

There are many different proposals out there: single payer, public option, Medicaid for all. And also there is a solution which is lesser known, which is the German multi-payer system. We have to be careful about imposing a federal solution on the states. And also, we must preserve patient choice.

Bottom line is that we must end the practice of allowing corporations and the wealthy to profit off other people’s suffering. We must design a healthcare system that is run to cost along the model of a co-op. We must ban pharmaceutical companies from running ads for their products. We must limit the salaries of CEOs. We must penalize private insurers for denying claims and provide incentives when more claims are covered.

Also, we must do a medical debt forgiveness program for middle class families across the United States and have that paid for out of the salaries of wealthy CEOs and bloated health insurance companies.